photo by Indigo GoatOne of the hardest things for an artist or band to do when they’re just starting out is to grow your initial following. You can only rely on bugging your friends and family to come out to your shows for so long.
Growing your email list is crucial to securing and keeping a following. It’s the most effective way to communicate directly with the people who make gigging and recording worthwhile. In this article, I will talk about ways to increase your email subscriber count. Be sure to check out the next article in this series, where I discuss the most effective ways to craft and send out your promotional emails.
There are several ways to gain new subscribers to your email list.
The first and best method is to promote your mailing list at all of your gigs. Mention it at least once while you’re on stage. Place lists with pens throughout the venue - near the stage, at the bar, at the door. Be sure to provide a dark ball-point pen that writes well! I have made the mistake in the past of using a pen that’s running out, or a sharpie marker only to find a list full of addresses that I can’t read!
Ideally, you should have somebody walking around with a sign-up list while you’re on stage. If people are enjoying your set, they’re more likely to offer their contact info. But they have short memories! You can’t expect many first-time listeners to sign up for your list an hour or two after you get off-stage. They’re already wrapped up in the band that came on after you, or they have left the bar and moved on with their bar crawl.
If you’re rolling solo, and don’t have a girlfriend or buddy to help you out with the leg-work during your live set, then you must get out there and promote your list yourself. Do this immediately after wrapping up your set, so you are still fresh in people’s minds. This is not the time to be shy. Be friendly and outgoing and politely ask the people who watched you play if they’d like to offer their email address. If they decline, you must respect their decision and simply move on.
In addition to grabbing email subscribers at your shows, you should have an email sign-up form on your website, Myspace page, Facebook profile, and all of your online social networking tools. There are lots of easy ways to implement this. I will write about this in depth in a future article. For now, try Googling to find an email sign-up widget to place in your myspace profile (or contact me directly for web design inquiries).
You might also consider using a service such as iContact.com or aweber.com for managing your email list, adding sign-up forms, sending and tracking email blasts. These are very powerful tools and they’re quite easy to use.
Get creative by adding incentives to signup for the mailing list. If you’re promoting an album or EP, you might want to offer a few of the tracks as free downloads to those who enter their email address. At your shows, offer a free sticker or other merch for signing up.
The next article in this series focuses on how to use your email newletter effectively.
I now turn it over to you - Which methods for growing your email list have worked for you? Share your ideas in the comments!
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12/16/2008
4:19 pm
remowill
Writing articles about what it is that you do, and posting those articles on ezines might help also.
12/16/2008
7:48 pm
Geoserv
STUMBLED!
This might be a good way to build an email list for almost any service or website as well.
Not the gig part, but good old pen and paper sign ups.
Good post.
12/16/2008
8:01 pm
Brian Casel
Absolutely.
There’s nothing like that personal touch.
02/11/2009
11:38 am
Isaac Priestley
Great tips! Another thing we do in World Racketeering Squad is to combine the mailing list with the Facebook event with text messaging.
So we send out our usual mailing list updates promoting the gig, and people can RSVP to the Facebook event. I usually follow up with most of the people who RSVP’d as yes, thanking them and saying we’re looking forward to seeing them. And with the maybes, saying we’d love to see them.
Each of the band members also usually sends text messages to most of the local friends in our phones mentioning the band.
Oh, and we Tweet about it too.